Deep are the lilies here that lay Lush, lambent leaves along our way, Or pollen-dusty bob and float White nenuphars about our boat
This side the woodland we have reached; Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached. There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak
Floods from the Alleghanies bore To wedge here by this sycamore; Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white, Lights ghostly foxfire in the night.
Now oar we through this willow fringe The bulging shore that bosks,— a tinge Of green mists down the marge;— where old, Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade
With breezy balsam pungent; bowled Around vined trunks the floods have made Concentric hollows. On we pass. As we pass, we pass, we pass,
In daisy jungles deep as grass, A bubbling sparrow flirts above In wood-words with its woodland love: A white-streaked woodpecker afar
Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star, Three glittering jays flash over: slim The piping sand-snipes skip and skim Before us: and a finch or thrush —
Who may discover where such sing?— The silence rinses with a gush Of mellow music gurgling. On we pass, and onward oar
To yon long lip of ragged shore, Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore A ferny spring; where dodging by Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly;
Mallows, rank crowded in for room, ‘ Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom; Where fishers‘ neath those cottonwoods Last Spring encamped those ashes say
And charcoal boughs.—‘ T is long till buds!— Here who in August misses May?
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